Colombia to restore birthplace of Nobel author

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia celebrated the 80th birthday of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez on March 6 with a vow to rebuild the author's childhood home in the banana-producing town of Aracataca and convert it into a museum.

The government pledged $500,000 to reconstruct the home where the author drew inspiration for his trademark magical realism literary style.

According to his 2003 autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, it was on the patio of his thatch-roofed childhood home that the young Garcia Marquez eavesdropped on his grandmother and aunts, whose stories of ghosts visiting in the night and opera-singing parrots would later pepper much of his literature, including his award-winning One Hundred Years of Solitude.